Scrapbook 1: Jan 1962 — Ranger 3

New U.S. Space shot on course

Cape Canaveral, Florida, Saturday

A GLITTERING, gold-and-silver-plated American Spaceship is heading today for the Moon and doing fine.

The Spaceship Ranger Three, carrying TV cameras and other instruments, was launched on the nose of a 100ft. long Atlas-Agena double rocket last night.

And Ranger Three—11ft. long, weighing 727lb.—got away dead on time for her journey through 235,000 miles of cold, silent emptiness.

The velvet-smooth launching of Ranger Three came during the count-down for today’s trip by American Marine Colonel John Glenn, who is due to be whisked round the world three times in a two-ton Spaceship.

‘Coasting’

DEAD ON TIME, the white twin rocket roared off Launching Pad Twelve, a mile from where I stood watching.

DEAD ON TIME, five minutes after launching, the 78ft.-long Atlas rocket burned out.

For half a minute, the whole assembly “coasted.” Then…

DEAD ON TIME, explosive charges blasted the dead Atlas shell from the 22ft. Agena rocket and her Spaceship load.

DEAD ON TIME, the Agena’s motors opened up for a 150-second burst that took it to a speed of 1,800 miles an hour. Then . . .

DEAD ON TIME, the motors shut off for another four minutes of “coasting” which was planned to position the Agena’s passenger for the final blast.

Tension

Then came thirty-five minutes of agonised tension as Cape Canaveral waited for word of the Agena’s “second burn.”

But at last, America’s National Aeronautics and Space Administration announced:

“Ranger Three is on her way to the Moon. She is on approximately the correct trajectory.”

With a parting 23,800 m.p.h. boost from the Agena, the gleaming Spaceship curved away on the S-shaped course which, it is hoped, will get her to the Moon on Monday afternoon—about sixty-six hours after the launching.

As the Spaceship was set free from the Agena, she spread insect-like “wings”—solar-power cells to help steer by the sun.

In a fantastically difficult series of manoeuvres, Ranger Three must—

TWIST once, to angle her power-cell paddles at the sun;

TWIST a second time to point her radio antenna at the Earth, for steering instructions, and—

TWIST AGAIN when she gets to within 5,000 miles of the Moon, so that television cameras aboard are pointed at her target.

The cameras will be switched on by a signal from an 85ft.-diameter radio-telescope at Goldstone, California.

Pictures

At 2,400 miles from the Moon, the cameras will start sending pictures back to Earth . . . one picture every fifteen seconds.

When the Spaceship is just fifteen miles and eight seconds from the Moon’s surface, a white instrument-package, shaped like an Eskimo igloo, will be blasted free.

Brake-rockets will start up, slowing the “igloo” from 6,000 m.p.h to 150 m.p.h. for its landing on the Moon

As the “igloo” slows, the rest of the Ranger Spaceship will hurtle past, and wipe itself out in a crash-landing.

Although the Ranger will be destroyed, she has been sterilised to avoid taking Earth germs to the Moon.

So has the “igloo” package.

After a rough landing on the Moon’s surface, its instruments will start bleeping back information about “moonquakes”—the equivalent of earthquakes.

WHERE on the Moon Is the Space-shot expected to land?

“No particular spot,” a scientist told me. “We’ll be glad to hit the Moon at all.”

As Ranger Three heads into deep Space today she is being tracked by two radio stations in South Africa and one in Australia, as well as the station at Goldstone, California.

Britain’s huge radio telescope at Jodrell Bank, Cheshire, was joining in the operation in the early hours today.

But because of the direction in which Ranger Three was launched, the Jodrell Bank team will be unable to keep track of her as they did with Russia’s Lunik Two, which hit the Moon in 1959.

“NOMINAL FLIGHT” Launching “Flawless”

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration announced 40 minutes later that the launching vehicle had performed flawlessly.

A deep space tracking station in South Africa had traced the spacecraft. “It appears we have a nominal (normal) flight,” the announcement said. It was a good omen for to-morrow’s attempt to send Lt.-Col. John Glenn three times round the earth.

But several intricate manœuvres must be made by Ranger III before the planned Monday landing. Included is a tricky firing of a mid-course rocket 16 hours after launching to direct the payload on a collision course with the Moon.

Five minutes after launching the Atlas rocket burned out about 150 miles up. The rocket coasted for about 30 seconds, then the Agena motor fired for a 2½-minute “burn,” blasting the second stage clear from the Atlas.

The Agena and the spacecraft then soared into “parking” orbit at 18,000 m.p.h.

At about 70,000ft from the Moon and eight seconds before the spacecraft is due to crash-land at 6,000 mph, the lunar capsule will be expelled. It is less than 12in in diameter and should hit the planet at under 150 mph.

U.S. CAPSULE ON WAY TO MOON

Landfall on Monday: perfect launching

COL. GLENN PREPARES FOR ORBIT TO-DAY

From ALEX FAULKNER, Daily Telegraph Special Correspondent

CAPE CANAVERAL, Friday.

THE United States to-day fired Ranger III, a space craft packed with instruments, to the Moon. Its aim is to send back close-range television pictures of the Moon and transmit radio signals when it lands.

The gold and silver craft was shot into space at 8.30 p.m. (GMT) from Cape Canaveral, Florida, and was expected to reach a speed of 24,500 m.p.h. It was powered by two rockets, an Atlas and an Agena, both of which fired as planned.

After a perfect launching, Ranger III appeared to be on its way to the Moon. The Johannesburg and Woomera tracking stations picked up its signals and it was announced that “the vehicle is leaving the Earth fairly close to the right trajectory.”

If all goes well the spacecraft will land on the Moon at 3 p.m. on Monday, after a 236,924-mile trip through space. Britain’s Jodrell Bank radio telescope was due to track its journey to help with scientific data when it comes above the British horizon about 2.30 a.m. to-morrow.

Officials announced 10 minutes after launching that the Agena-B second-stage rocket had ignited successfully the first time and had entered its orbital coasting phase.

Seven phases of the Moon rocket

By John Maddox, our Science Correspondent

The sequence of events planned to follow the launching of the most complicated rocket yet launched from either the United States or the Soviet Union is in itself a demonstration of how much ingenuity and development has gone into the preparation of this device in the last seven months, when it was rst launched.

1. Thirty minutes after launching a computer was intended to arrange that the panels carrying the batteries intended to turn the energy of the sun into electricity should spring out from their folded positions and begin to produce power for the rocket. At the same time radio aeriels were intended to spring out of the rear.

2. Three minutes later the rocket was planned to begin “looking” for the sun with the help of six radiation detectors mounted on it. The process of finding the sun and slowing down the spinning of the rocket by means of gyroscopes and jets of gas was expected to take something like 29 minutes.

3. Three and a half hours after launching the rocket was planned to begin looking for the earth by means of a device consisting of a combination of a sensitive radio aeriel and a device for picking up optical radiation. From this point on its journey the rocket would remain fixed in its direction in space with regard to the sun and the earth.

4. Four hours after launching it was planned that one of the instruments carried on the rocket—one for detecting X-rays—should spring out on a telescopic arm 72 inches long and begin to take measurements. Later on in this hight the arm is intended to be lengthened.

5. Twelve and a half hours after launching the rocket will, for the second time, be within radio contact of the observatory at Goldstone, Arizona, and at this point a check was planned of the accuracy with which the rocket had lined itself up with respect to the sun and the earth. Corrections to this procedure could if necessary be sent to the rocket from the earth.

6. Sixteen hours after launching, the rocket will at the limit of the distance over which its less sensitive radio aerial works well, and this point has been chosen for carrying out any corrections to the course of the rocket which may be shown to be necessary by observation from the ground.

7. For the next two days—that is until roughly 10 o’clock on Monday morning—the rocket will continue passively on its course while stations on the ground will mak eexact calculations of when it should arrive at the moon and where. These will be used to work out when it will be necessary to turn on the scientific instruments intended to gather information about the moon.